If you’ve spent any time watching the Maple Leafs partake in one of coach Randy Carlyle’s practice-capping, puke-bucket-optional conditioning skates, you can get a general idea of how the players feel about the exercise.

One look at Phil Kessel’s eyes, frequently rolling to the rafters as he brings up the rear of the group, is a consistent bellwether.

But in the throes of those workouts, Barbara Underhill suggests the Leafs focus on something other than outward expressions of disgruntlement. Once a world-champion figure skater, Underhill has been the team’s skating consultant since last year. It’s her job to take Toronto’s collection of skaters — already highly paid pros or highly touted prospects — and make them even more accomplished on their blades. To her mind, there are few better places to improve one’s stride than during one of Carlyle’s sweat fests. Thinking about mechanics during full-contact practices and games, after all, can be a recipe for concussion by misplaced attention.

“I want them to focus on their technique during bag skates, because that’s when they can think about it,” Underhill says.

If bag skates are a great time to ponder one’s methods, she says a few weeks of concentrated summer work are even better, which is why the NHL offseason is prime season for Underhill, who spent last week working with Toronto prospects at the club’s development camp. Having logged most of seven years analyzing and attempting to improve the technique of NHLers and would-be pros, there are more than a few things she’s learned. If a stride is too upright, she explains, a player’s weight is generally on the heels and too much of the work is being done by his quadriceps muscles — the big movers on the front of the thighs.

“During a bag skate, his quads will be burning,” Underhill said.

If a stride leans too far forward, on the other hand, the leg push is abbreviated and heels kick up. Power is sapped.

“(Someone who skates like that) is not going to go anywhere,” Underhill said.

There are no absolutes, of course. Every stride is different. And while Underhill’s background is in figure skating, her template for steel-borne excellence isn’t, say, Patrick Chan. It’s Mike Gartner, the ex-Maple Leaf renowned for his seemingly effortless speed.

Underhill began pondering the intricacies of hockey-specific movement at the urging of her husband, Rick Gaetz, who coached their children and was also a partner in the OHL’s Guelph Storm. But after Gaetz, an avid golfer, underwent a video analysis that juxtaposed his golf swing with that of career-prime Tiger Woods, Underhill was won over to the power of video coaching. She enlisted Gartner, whom she had videotaped in full flight from various angles, to act as her equivalent of the golf legend.

“I looked at all the elements of Mike’s stride — his recovery, his extension, where his weight is, where his shoulders are,” Underhill says. “And then I just worked on pulling everything apart. The bend of his knees, the angle of his body. I wanted to figure out, ‘Why is he so good? Why is he known as one of the best skaters ever?’”

She found, for instance, that Gartner bent his lead knee by an average of about 83.5 degrees, this while tilting his torso forward about 45 degrees. Those measurements aren’t far off from those of the man Underhill names as the best pure skater of more recent Leafs vintage, Matthew Lombardi.

“His skating is unbelievable,” Underhill says of Lombardi. “Everything is like a machine. There’s no extra movement anywhere.”

She’s not attempting to completely reinvent the way the Leafs move about the NHL playing surface — her job amounts to tweaking more than restructuring — and she’s not doing her work alone. She collaborates closely with Anthony Belza, the team’s strength and conditioning coach, to identify key physical deficiencies that can rob players of speed. Tight hip flexors, for instance, are a hockey-specific occupational hazard that, if not addressed, can inhibit full extension of the leg while increasing risk of injury.

“She looks at players and she says, ‘I can make this guy 2 per cent better.’ Or, ‘I can make this guy 10 per cent better.’ But whatever that number is, she’s relentless in trying to reach that number,” says Dave Nonis, the Leafs general manager. “She feels even the best skater can improve. And I think you look at the results she’s had — not just with our players, but with other players around the league — and I think she’s right.”

Says Underhill, 50, who also works with the Tampa Bay Lightning and retains a list of clients from other teams: “Sometimes it’s the smallest detail, the smallest thing. Even the greatest skaters can be better in some way.”

Underhill has been lauded by more than a few Maple Leafs, among them Colton Orr and Joffrey Lupul, for her role in their on-ice refinement. Ditto Nazem Kadri, the Leafs forward whose breakout 2013 season was abetted by an Underhill-inspired re-think of his stride. Prior to the lockout-truncated campaign Underhill’s video analysis of Kadri revealed a key shortcoming: While his initial push was strong and athletic — and while flat-out speed was one of his key assets — the rate at which he returned his knee to the loaded position was, by Underhill’s estimation, about twice as slow as a typical pro.

“Before I started working with her, I would kind of coast my leg out when I pushed on the stride, and my leg would stay there for a split second,” Kadri explains. “That’s the kind of stuff that’s hard to see at full speed, but it’s amazing what you can learn with video. But by working on snapping my leg back to normal position ... I’ve become one or 2 ½ strides quicker skating (the full length of) the ice. It makes a difference.”

Nonis says there has been occasional reluctance among some pros to change the methods that landed them their rich contracts. But even if they can’t be seen at full speed, the success stories get around fast.

“At this level, it’s about getting there a millionth of a second before the other guy,” Underhill says. “It’s getting into the really fine details and finding that little extra, whether it’s the way they turn, the way they stop, the way they start. Whatever it is, it’s pulling apart their game and making it more efficient. What most players find after working over several sessions over the summer is that the game gets easier. When I hear that word — ‘easier’ — I know I’ve got ’em.”

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